Scooby's Home Bodybuilding Workouts Vegetarianism and Bodybuilding

Is it possible to bodybuild without meat?  Without fish/chicken/meat is it possible to gain or maintain muscle?  Very good questions and not a lot of research to help us out with the answers since most studies on vegetarianism revolve around sedentary adults.  I've been doing some reading on the link between diet and cancer and heart disease and have decided that it is definitely healthier to eat a plant based diet, if you are interested read the book "The China Diet".  The question is, am I going to have to lower my bodybuilding standards to be a vegetarian? 

I have been on basically a vegetarian diet since 3/2006 and have found no reduction in muscle mass from eliminating meat/chicken/fish in my diet.  When I eat at restaurants which is about twice a week, I allow myself to have meat so some small amount of my protein comes from meat but not any significant amount.  I have convinced myself that eliminating meat/chicken/fish from the diet will not limit a bodybuilders progress.  Granted, this in no way constitutes a scientific study and I hope that real studies will be done in the future to prove this.  Please note my diet is not vegan, I still eat about 180g of protein from whey daily.

The real question is, can a bodybuilder build muscle on a vegan diet like the raw food diet or the McDougall diet?  It appears the answer might be 'Yes', check out some photos of vegan bodybuilders.  I'm not sure if these bodybuilders built their muscle with animal proteins then switched to vegan or if they started bodybuilding when they were vegan, it probably makes a huge difference.  Any 18-25 year old men out there who are willing to participate in an experiment?  If you are passionate about your vegan diet and willing to give bodybuilding 100% please let me know.   I really wish someone would do a real scientific study on this with a few hundred male bodybuilders of the same bodytypes in the 21-25 age bracket who are all given the same access to coaching and nutrition experts but with:

• one group 100 bodybuilders getting 2g/lb of protein per day from meat/fish/chicken

• the second group of 100 bodybuilders getting 2g/lb of protein per day from dairy whey

• the third group of 100 bodybuilders getting 2g/lb of protein per day from plant sources (soy, legumes, grains)

Will someone PLEASE do this study!!!!!  To be meaningful, it would probably need to be at least a 2 year study.  If you had another 300 bodybuilders, it would be nice to add three more groups equivalent to the first three but cut their protein consumption down to the USRDA.

The inevitable question is, "how do you get enough protein on a vegan diet?".  The first question is how much protein is "enough" for a bodybuilder?  I have no idea! The bodybuilding magazines would have you taking at least a 1-2 grams of animal proteins per pound of bodyweight a day.  The "raw food diet" advocates would say that you get "enough" from fruits, vegetables and a half cup of nuts.   If anyone has seen studies which shed some light on this, please let me know!!!  As usual, the truth is probably somewhere between the two extremes.  Anyway, how do you get protein on a vegan diet?  Soy certainly high in protein but is not without controversy.  Legumes are a great source,  I eat a lot of legumes.   Many grains are high in protein also, just have to check out their amino acid mix.  Rice is used by much of the worlds population, gotta be something there.  Another very interesting grain I have started eating is quinoa. The nutritional quality of this crop has been compared to that of dried whole milk by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The protein quality and quantity in quinoa seed is often superior to those of more common cereal grains. Quinoa is higher in lysine than wheat, and the amino acid content of quinoa seed is considered well-balanced for human and animal nutrition, similar to that of casein.  It's available at Whole Foods for $1.79/lb and I have made a tasty version of tabouli using it.  Below is the amino acid breakdown of various grains compared to Quinoa.

Amino Acid	Amino Acid Content (g/100g protein)
	Quinoa	Wheat	Soy		Skim Milk	FAO
	%
Isoleucine	4.0	3.8		4.7	5.6	4.0
Leucine	6.8	6.6		7.0	9.8	7.0
Lysine	5.1	2.5		6.3	8.2	5.5
Phenylalanine	4.6	4.5		4.6	4.8	-
Tyrosine	3.8	3.0		3.6	5.0	-
Cystine	2.4	2.2		1.4	0.9	-
Methionine	2.2	1.7		1.4	2.6	-
Threonine	3.7	2.9		3.9	4.6	4.0
Tryptophan	1.2	1.3		1.2	1.3	1.0
Valine	4.8	4.7		4.9	6.9	5.0